Volume 4 Number 1 Summer 2006 “The Bridge between Eastern and Western Cultures” In This Issue From the Editor • Boris Il’ich Marshak (1933-2006) • Rock Art in the Altai of Mongolia • The Origins of the Great Wall This year Mongolia celebrates the extolling the natural beauties of • Report on the Tamir Excavation of 800th anniversary of the kuriltai the country, the warm hospitality 2005 which marked the founding of the of its people, or the mixed • Chinese Lacquerware in Xiongnu Mongolian Empire under its leader successes in facing the challenges Graves newly designated as Chingis Khan. of economic and political transition • Two Han Mirrors Found in the Tamir Under Chingis and his successors during the post-communist period. th Cemetery Mongolia in the 13 century was In a previous number of The Silk for a time indeed at the ‘center of Road (Vol. 2, no. 1) Prof. Morris • The Ethnicity of the Xiongnu Confederacy the world.’ As students of Inner Rossabi, who has spent so much Asian history know, at several of his career enlightening us about • Archaeology of the Mongolian earlier times in its history too, the country’s earlier history, period Mongolia had been the center of provided an eye-opening overview • An Interview with Dorjpagma nomadic polities which encom- of those challenges and the Navaan passed large portions of Inner Asia disappoinments of the last decade • The Francke-Körber Collection in and played a major role in the lives and a half, which he analyzes in Munich of their nomadic and sedentary some detail in his most recent neighbors. It is appropriate book. His observations were Next Issue therefore that we devote much of reinforced for me last year in this issue of The Silk Road to Bayan Ölgiy, a town of some A focus on Afghanistan and Bactria: Mongolia. 20,000 in Mongolia’s far west, • Nicholas Sims-Williams on new where what little manufacturing discoveries of Bactrian documents I feel fortunate to have spent there had been collapsed with the some six weeks in Mongolia last end of socialist subsidies, and the • Richard Salomon and Stefan Baums on new discoveries at Termez summer, initially as a lecturer and town was without electricity for participant in the archaeological much of the day due to its inability • contributions by Thomas Barfield, expedition co-sponsored by the to pay its electric bill. Our visit to Zemarlayai Tarzi, François Louis, and much more.... Silkroad Foundation and the the local museum was a curious Mongolian National University, and post-socialist experience of then doing independent touring to viewing displays still glorifying About view petroglyphs in the Altai heroic workers and revolutionaries, Mountains of Mongolia’s far west. which we could see only because The Silk Road is a semi-annual publi- This was my third and longest visit we had brought our flashlights. cation of the Silkroad Foundation. The Silk Road can also be viewed on-line there, one made the more at <http://www. silkroadfoundation. rewarding by my preparation in Should all that sound de- org>. Please feel free to contact us recent years to introduce students pressing, on the contrary, seeing with any questions or contributions. to Mongolian history. It is no how people are imaginatively Guidelines for contributors may be accident that the final course I adapting to the challenges of found in Vol. 2, No. 1 (June 2004) on chose to teach before my recent transition is in fact inspiring. One the website. retirement was one devoted to comes away with an even greater Mongolia, even though I hardly appreciation of the ways in which The Silkroad Foundation P.O. Box 2275 qualify as a ‘specialist’ on its traditional Mongolian life and Saratoga, CA. 95070 history. values retain their vitality. For in fact the adaptations worked out Editor: Daniel C. Waugh There are a great many reasons millennia ago to live well in an [email protected] to learn about Mongolia — its often harsh natural environment present as well as its past. Rarely have proved to be remarkably © 2006 Silkroad Foundation these days do more than a few suited to sustaining the cultures weeks pass without the publication out of which emerged political © 2006 by authors of individual articles and holders of copyright, as of yet another news article leaders whose organizational specified, to individual images. abilities made Mongolia so im- portant historically. It is no accident that the Kazakh, Mongolian and Tuvan herders of the Altai are tracing still the time- tested grazing routes and wintering in the same locations as their remote predecessors who left the glorious arrays of petroglyphs about which Prof. Esther Jacobson writes in this issue. Right now, herding is profitable, although the mix of profits, leading to a greater emphasis in some areas on the herding of goats, which destroy the 2005 Photo © Daniel C. Waugh Fig. 2. Wooden bridge across the Orkhon River, looking toward Tamiryn Ulaan regenerative power of the Khoshuu (the hill in center). vegetation as they eat it, poses a threat for the future. So also does can be a challenge for the by easily traversable passes. One the impact of climate change. Here urbanized driver from Ulaanbaatar can appreciate why the Xiongnu we are talking not just about the (our driver managed to get lost...). who buried their dead at Tamiryn unseasonable winters of a few That we ask such a question Ulaan Khoshuu where we years ago, in which so many reflects merely how far we excavated would have chosen that animals died, a frequent enough outsiders are removed from the site, on the south-facing slopes of occurrence historically. It is context and time of those earlier a hill with an inspiring view out possible that longer-term changes empires, and from the values over the tree-lined, winding course in precipitation have begun, where which animated their inhabitants. of the Tamir River. We cannot insufficient moisture means some know whether those Xiongnu had pastures dry out much earlier than Looked on from a different the same kind of aesthetic used to be the case, and eventually perspective, the Orkhon and its appreciation we do today, thrilling the rivers too may dwindle. tributaries such as the Tamir are at the contrast of the late ideal country for pastoral herders afternoon sun intensifying the As David Purcell and Kimberly (Fig. 2): rich in water and grass; green meadow next to the river Spurr note in their excavation easily traveled, where the against the backdrop of black report below, the Orkhon River topography that seems somewhat thunderclouds on the northern valley in north central Mongolia is intimidating on a modern map horizon, or marveling at the sunset an area of particular historical turns out to be rolling hills or cut colors on the clouds of a rain squall interest, since it formed the passing to the south. Indeed, a heartland of empires from the place to perform the rituals of final Xiongnu down through the Mongol. farewells with the hope that the One may go to the Orkhon with at dead would remain undisturbed. least a vague awareness of its importance — after all, many know Undisturbed they were not, at that is where Karakorum, the least judging from the limited Mongol capital so vividly described excavations so far undertaken, for by William of Rubruck in the 1250s, most of the graves seem to have was located. And many have been looted. What remains heard of the Orkhon Inscriptions suggests that at least the elite in (Fig. 1), the earliest major the Xiongnu society of some 2000 collection of texts in Old Turkic, years ago at Tamir were well- without necessarily associating connected and well-to-do. We them with the place where they found abundant evidence that they may still be seen. Yet to visit the owned Chinese lacquerware and Orkhon is a revelation. How can it prized Chinese bronze mirrors (see be, one may ask, that this remote the articles below). Regarding the region was the center of entities 2005 Photo © Daniel C. Waugh Chinese connection, readers Fig. 1.The Bilge Qaghan stele, contain- so important as the Turk or Mongol should find the observations of Dr. ing one of the famous Orkhon Inscrip- Empires? Today simply finding the tions, ca. 730 CE. In final stages of res- Di Cosmo in this issue to be of right road to get there amongst the toration and cleaning by members of particular interest, inviting us to multitude of unpaved and the Turkish-Mongolian archaeological re-think traditional conceptions unmarked tracks across the steppe expedition. about nomadic aggression and the 2 raison d’être of the Great Wall. That the nomads acquired considerable wealth was further supported by the fragments we found, suggesting that they dressed their dead with gold jewelry and imported beads. So far we can only hypothesize that the Xiongnu of Tamir clothed their dead in silks and fine woolen fabrics, but the evidence of better- preserved Xiongnu burials provides a reasonable basis for such an 2005 Photo © Daniel C. Waugh assumption. These may not have Fig. 3. A portion of the vast ruins of Karabalghasun, the Uighur capital of been royal tombs, but they were the 9th century, located in the Orkhon valley just north of Karakorum. tombs of those who lived well. The essay below detailing finds from certain of its peoples were valued the State Historical Museum in the recent Russian excavations because of their prowess at Moscow later in the summer. The headed by Dr. Miniaev in Buriatia, agriculture? Can we ever know? objects there were mid-14th just north of the Mongolian border, To what degree is it possible to century finds from the territory of gives an idea of the riches of what determine ethnicity from grave the Golden Horde (the western likely was a royal tomb.